


Hard Truths

by Peril_in_Peace



Series: The More Things Change [3]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Post-Infinity War, Post-Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, The Expansion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2018-12-29 20:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12092547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peril_in_Peace/pseuds/Peril_in_Peace
Summary: There's one more thing Peter wants to do before leaving Missouri, but it's harder than it should be. Meanwhile, Gamora and Pops hash a few things out; and Peter's pretty much made peace with the fact that being Ego's 'progeny' means general horribleness can and will follow him forever, but that doesn't mean he's happy about it... and neither is Gamora.





	1. Chapter 1

They were leaving in two days. Despite that, Pops had insisted on going downtown to the DMV. Miraculously, the man had produced Peter’s birth certificate, social security card… and a bill from the public library addressed to him for $472.13 in fines for a never-returned copy of  _ James and the Giant Peach _ . It had been sent to his grandfather’s house, his last home address, in the last two months. 

The Sovereign could learn something from the St. Charles Public Library System about holding a grudge.  

It sure didn’t hurt that Pops knew Madeline, the clerk, from bridge nights at the Y (it was a small town)… but even still, she scoffed at the idea of issuing a driver’s license to a man in his late thirties with no actual photo identification (in any language she’d be able to understand or on any media she could Xerox, anyway) and dubious proof of residency.

So, Pops shamelessly pulled out a dog-eared copy of Newsweek (“Avengers Again Defend Against Interstellar Attack: Will We Ever Be Safe?”), complete with blurry cover photo of Peter Quill, Steven Strange and Tony Stark fending off a small wave of the Black Order’s minions from behind a trashed car in Chelsea. 

“That photo ID enough for ya, Mad?” he said, shoving the magazine into the woman’s hands. 

Peter hung his head in his hands and tried to hide his utter embarrassment. Stark may be used to that sort of thing, but Peter was more of a quiet gratitude and tactful ‘there was the matter of the bill…?’ kinda guy.

“Oh my God…” he mumbled. “Pops, let’s just go…”

When no one said anything for a long, quiet moment, Peter risked a peek at the bureaucrat through spread fingers. She was still examining the magazine, attempting to take a sip from her coffee cup and almost missing her mouth.

“...He’ll have to take the test…” Madeline finally said softly. 

Pops crossed his arms and leaned back, preening triumphantly. “No problem.”

Two hours (and only one flattened orange cone) later, the Quills emerged from the squat brick building into a breezy, overcast afternoon. 

Peter looked at the laminated card one more time, grimacing at the awful picture before pulling out a couple of folded-up twenties from his back pocket. He slipped his license under the rubber band holding them together and stuffed it all back into his pocket with his phone as quickly as he could. 

“Gamora’s gonna love that picture,” Pops teased. 

“Shut up.”

“Thinkin’ I should take her over to Kinko’s and make a big copy, you guys can stick it up on the fridge.” 

“No. Seriously, it’s worse than my mugshot.” 

Pops shrugged. “Son, ID pictures are  _ supposed _ to be shit. Welcome to the club. Today, you are an American adult.”

Peter snorted, but couldn’t help but smile a little bit. He glanced over at his grandfather. “Thanks, Pops,” he said, with just enough sincerity that Pops swallowed hard and nodded, gripping his shoulder. 

“Yeah, kid.”

Peter nodded and looked through the parking lot at the park across the street, eyes settling on a figure in a long brown leather jacket and dark baseball cap, sitting at the base of a tree and reading from a tablet. He smiled. 

He was getting kinda used to seeing Gamora surrounded by… well… by  _ Earth _ . She was sitting under a tall oak tree. Behind her was the small lake he used to skate on in the winter as a kid when it got cold enough. The leaves of a couple of weeping willows barely grazed the shoreline and there was just enough sun shining through the clouds to put a little crystal shimmer on the rippling surface. 

And he thought, of all the places he’d been, the grass was still the greenest, here. More so than he’d remembered. 

Peter stuffed his hands in his pockets and hopped off the curb, crossing the street at a light jog with Pops strolling at his own pace behind. Gamora didn’t look up when he slid down the tree trunk and plopped next to her. 

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry that took so long.” 

She swung her knees over to nudge his, playfully. He looked over at her tablet. 

“Whatcha reading?”

“Why do they call them newspapers if they’re not on paper?” Gamora murmured. Peter smiled and shrugged, glancing up at Pops who had taken a more comfortable seat on a bench overlooking the lake. He had a vague memory of thick newspapers on Sunday mornings, Pops flipping through the sports pages, his mom scattering sale papers over the table. And that was the day the Peanuts cartoons were in color. 

“They used to be on paper. They still are… I’ve seen ‘em around… but seems like most people just read things online now. Is that… Japanese?”

“Mmm,” she nodded. 

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Touché.” Peter looked again at the screen. It took his translator a second to catalogue the characters, but he quickly gathered that she was reading an article about international politics and calls for planetary unity in light of… recent events. He wanted to care. He really did. He knew he should. But goddamn, it was boring. And frankly, he was still all for keeping ‘recent events’ as far from his mind as possible. 

He sighed, leaning his head back on the tree trunk and staring out at the lake. 

“How did it go?” asked Gamora. She set the tablet down and took off her hat, smoothing her hair with one hand. 

“Well… fine, I guess. I got it.” 

“Can I see it?” 

Peter swallowed hard and seriously contemplated the request, then nodded slowly and leaned onto one hip to pull his new driver’s license from his pocket. He handed it to her. Gamora flipped it over in her fingers and smiled. 

“Wow… this is… actually worse than your mugshot.” 

“Rocket  _ never _ sees this,” Peter growled. 

Gamora grinned. “Agreed. And… congratulations, Peter,” she said, handing back the card and dropping her head to his shoulder. He took her hand and relaxed his weight back onto the tree trunk. 

“We should head home. Before it starts raining,” Peter said. She twisted around to look at the sky through the leaves of the tree. 

“It’s not that cloudy…” she mumbled. “And I’m comfortable.” 

Peter shrugged. “You can smell it on the wind. The land around here is flat and open… storms roll in fast.”

Gamora looked at him then, in a way Peter hadn’t seen in a long time. Like she was trying to work him out, like a puzzle. 

“What?” He asked softly. 

“Nothing.” She smiled and shook her head.

“Really?”

“No, I just—There have been… moments… since we got here… where I’ve felt like I was…. I don’t know… meeting you for the first time,” Gamora answered quietly, looking away from him and out at the lake. 

Peter leaned back. “I—”

“It’s not a bad thing, Peter.”

“Uh-huh,” he eyed her incredulously, catching the corner of a smile on her turned-away face. But he thought he knew what she meant. Peter certainly hadn’t been trying to… but somewhere along the way, he’d started to feel at… home. And had let himself actually feel…  _ good _ about it.

And maybe… 

“I think I wanna go see Mom,” he said. The words were out before he really thought about them. 

He’d decided back in New York that visiting his mother’s grave was something he didn’t need to do. Peter had lived his whole life slowly and carefully building his avoidance and dissociation into something like what he figured ‘closure’ might feel like. And he…  _ had been  _ okay with that.

He took a deep breath and blew it out. There had been a couple of times… a few planets with similar atmospheres, where conditions had been just right, and the smell of prairie rain had hit him with faded memories of stormy nights and rolling thunder in the distance. Of his mom telling him not to be afraid of the angels bowling when the thunder got too close. 

Maybe it was just a crazy fixation on the smell of the air and how it pulled memories out of him, the way only smells could. Maybe the last few days have just been piling onto him, and… it wasn’t until just now that he realized he wasn’t trying to convince himself that this place wasn’t home. Or had been, once. And even if it wasn’t anymore, that still meant something. 

“Are you sure?” Gamora asked.

Peter nodded. 

“Then we should go before you change your mind.” Gamora got up and held out her hand. Peter took it and let her help him to his feet. 

“Hey, Pops?” Peter called over toward his grandfather as he straightened his jacket and checked his butt for grass stains.  “You think we can make a stop on the way back to the house?” 

“Whatcha got in mind?” Pops turned, hanging his arm over the back of the bench.

Peter stopped and hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans, shifting his weight onto one leg. Gamora had put her hat back on and stood behind Pops, leaning on the back of the bench. She was looking up at the sky. Peter distractedly wondered if the gathering clouds were making her believe him about the rain. 

“I’d like to see… Well, I wanna take Gamora to see Mom. Before we go,” he spit out, a little quicker than he’d intended. He was still looking at Gamora when he finished the sentence, but shifted his view to Pops just in time to see an odd expression flare, then disappear. Peter frowned. 

“Is that okay?” he asked. Pops seemed to swallow at that, and looked down at his lap, before putting on the kind of smile that made Peter think of old, bad conversations when people would tell him things would be fine, when they really wouldn’t be. Pops’ face was sure older, but something about the smile made him almost shiver. 

Pops opened his mouth, then closed it again. 

“Pops?” Peter started. The old man hadn’t looked this uncomfortable since they’d first arrived. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Pete. Fine. We--”

A big fat raindrop fell right into Peter’s eye. He squinted up at the sky, only to be pelted in the face by a few more. 

“We should probably head home and wait for the rain to pass,” Pops said, pulling his glasses off his nose and rubbing away the spatters with the hem of his shirt.

 

* * *

 

They drove back to the house in silence, then ran to the porch from the detached garage. The rain had really started to come down, the noise making it harder for Gregg to think. 

They’d passed the empty lot where the old Episcopal church had been on the way home. Most of stuff around it had been rebuilt or sold to the city. The parish still hadn't decided what to do with the land the church and the cemetery had sat on, other than building the memorial and helping families replace headstones or make plaques, where remains couldn't be salvaged. 

They’d passed the empty lots and new construction a couple of times, and every time, Gregg had held his breath, hoping Peter wouldn't ask about all the changes… he didn't seem to remember enough. And he hadn't been part of the conversation about funeral arrangements and Mer wanting to be buried in the church graveyard with Gregg’s parents. 

He just didn't know how to tell him there wasn't a grave there anymore to visit. Just a plaque on a wall, with his parents’ names and Meredith's and the dates of their birthday and deaths to simply say they'd  _ been  _ here. 

Everything else got wiped away with the old Dairy Queen, a couple blocks of downtown, and some of the forest preserve at the edge of the cemetery. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pops and Gamora have a chat; Peter has a mission.

So Peter had been right. It started to rain. Hard. 

Gamora peeled wet locks of hair away from her face and resisted the urge to shake the moisture off once under the cover of the porch roof. Peter didn’t resist the urge, apparently, leaning over and rubbing the excess water out of his hair like he’d just gotten out of the shower. 

Pops didn’t seem to care that he was wet at all. The house keys slipped out of his fingers and Gamora immediately reached down to pick them up. The older man slowly wiped his hands on his damp pants to try and dry them off before taking them back with a nod and twirling the keys in his fingers until finding the right one. 

His eye caught Gamora’s just before he opened the door and she tilted her head, curious. 

He’d been unusually quiet on the ride home and she was concerned. If he didn’t want to visit Meredith’s grave, she could understand. Certainly, he knew that he could just say that? That there was no need to be so concerned or act so distant. Or worry Peter, for that matter. At this rate, he would change his mind and then regret it… 

Pop’s eyes flicked back toward Peter and he straightened, turning away from her. “Pete--you mind checkin’ the windows in the workshop? Pretty sure we left ‘em open, and we don’t need shit rustin’ in there.”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter replied, pausing and glaring resentfully up at the sky, before tugging at his collar and running down the porch steps back into the rain. Pops pushed the door open and ushered Gamora inside. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked him pointedly and immediately, crossing her arms. Pops looked up at her sideways, from where he sat in a kitchen chair taking off his wet sneakers. He looked back over at the door, kicked his shoes under the chair, then nodded her into the living room. 

“There’s no grave for you guys to go see,” he said with a sigh, falling heavily into his recliner. Gamora frowned and sat across from him on the edge of the coffee table. “I don’t know what to tell Peter.”

“That’s not so strange. Just tell him… if she was cremated or--”

“No, she was buried. She  _ had  _ a grave. It’s just not there anymore. I guess I could tell a tale… I could  _ say  _ we had her cremated, scattered her ashes somewhere. There’s a plaque I could show him. But I didn’t want to lie to the kid. Do you think I should?” He looked over at her, his eyes were red, like he was fighting tears. And asking her counsel. He genuinely didn’t know what to do… 

“What…” Gamora started slowly. “What do you mean, she  _ had _ a grave?”

“She  _ had _ one. In the church cemetery. My parents, too. Something happened a few years ago, though. Crazy environmental disaster… government came in and said it was some kinda sinkhole collapse, triggered a chemical reaction in a tainted aquifer or somethin’… It was bad. Killed a lot of people, destroyed a lot of buildings. The church and the land around it, too. A lot of families lost… what was left of those they’d lost.” 

Gamora fought down a bead of creeping bile. A good enough story, similar to ones told on plenty of backwater worlds, but false, of course… 

“There’s a really nice memorial, there… And a plaque, like I said. The new park is really something… they tried to make it… well, make folks feel better. He’d understand, right? It’s nobody’s fault, and there’s a place to go to remember--”

“Lie,” she found herself whispering. 

“What?” Pops looked up at her, startled. 

Gamora cleared her throat and looked up at him. “Please. Lie. Tell him… tell him you scattered her ashes and there’s nothing left, and that you’re sorry there’s nothing for him to visit,” she said softly. 

“I don’t--” Pops started. 

Gamora shook her head and dropped a hand to his knee. “You  _ asked  _ me--”

“Don’t worry about it, Pops.”

Gamora closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. “Peter--”

Now she could hear the squelching of his boots on the linoleum in the kitchen as he shifted his weight. She stood up and looked at him standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. 

He was drenched, hair plastered to his head and water dripping from the bottom of his jacket onto the carpet. Pop’s spare set of keys--the workshop and garage keys, she suddenly recognized--dangled from his left hand. He would have needed them to close the windows, like Pops had asked… 

“ _ Peter… _ ” she tried again. He  _ ignored _ her. 

“Pops,” Peter started. “Do you really need those windows checked?” He asked simply, holding up the keys he must have come back inside to retrieve.

Pops looked at Gamora, then back at Peter and gave a quick nod. “Please,” he answered. Peter eyed them for a second, then just turned, and walked back out the kitchen door. 

“ _ Dammit, _ ” Gamora breathed, still standing in the middle of the living room.

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault…” Pops apologized quietly. Gamora shook her head. 

“No. It really is not,” she answered dully, her hand clenched at her sides. 

“You were right, I should have just told him, instead of him overhearing like that. I was guilty of the same thing when he was a kid… kept a lot from him about his mom being sick that we probably shouldn’t have. I… It’s not my place. He’s a grown man. Deserves to know.”

Gamora swallowed hard and sat back down on the coffee table, if only to keep herself from pacing. Instead, she gripped the edge of the table, until the veneer popped away and the plywood underneath started to splinter into her hand. 

“Kiddo?” The voice was gentle and made her look up. Pops tilted his head toward the crunched pieces of table in her hand, his expression soft. “I know I haven’t known you long… but I haven’t known you to get so… angry.”

Gamora shuddered in a breath, suddenly pulling her hand up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t--”

Pops shook his head. “It’s just a table. But...” He looked at her, expression a mix of concern and…  _ command _ ? She almost,  _ almost _ forgot herself and smiled again at seeing Peter in the man in the most surprising ways. “You’re going to need to tell me what this is really about.”

Gamora opened her mouth to protest and Pops immediately put up his hand. 

“You asked me to _lie_.” he interrupted firmly, leaning toward her. “To _Peter_. Now again... I know I haven't known you long, but I  _know_ that doesn't happen. It made you sick to ask me that, and you did it anyway. So fill in the holes. Now.” 

“When Peter comes ba--”

“He won’t.”

“What?” Gamora frowned. Her mind was swimming a little, as she tried to catch up with _how_ Peter's grandfather was talking to her and  _what_ he was actually saying. Was this how it felt to be young, reprimanded by a parent? She couldn't remember...  

“He’s already gone. He’s pissed off at us, got access to a car and a shiny new license. He was good as gone as soon as he was out the door.”

“How do you--”

“I raised his mother, kiddo. I know.” His voice softened at that, his face lighter... fatherly. 

“Should… we be worried?” Gamora asked, lips just hinting at a small smile. 

Pops smirked. “No,” he said. “At least, I wouldn’t think so… but…” he sighed. “Why… why did you tell me to lie about Meredith’s grave?”

Gamora stared at him for a moment, then looked toward the kitchen, willing Peter to come in through the door… to come home. This wasn’t her story to tell. It wasn’t her right. Peter had made the choice already of what to tell his grandfather and what to keep to himself, and she didn’t want to break that confidence… but… 

It wasn’t their place to keep things from this man, either, was it? 

“What happened….” she started slowly. “What happened a few years ago… that destroyed part of the town, and the church and cemetery… it wasn’t just some… environmental disaster,” Gamora said. 

Pops nodded at her to continue. 

“And it wasn’t just here. It happened on many worlds throughout the galaxy, almost all at the same time. And it was caused… done on purpose. It  _ was _ , actually, someone’s fault.” 

“Who did it?”

Gamora looked at her hands in her lap. “Ego.”

Pops sat back in his recliner with a loud, breathy “oh.” 

“And…” he eventually started again, slowly and more softly. “He was doing this when you stopped him… you guys killed him, which is why it ended and didn’t get worse.”

She nodded. “Peter, he--” her breath hitched. She always thought she was past that, but every time Gamora thought about it, she couldn’t help but think about how much…  _ wronger _ still it could have gone… 

“We were there in the first place because he found us… told Peter that he was looking for him… wanted to be a father to him. I convinced him that we should go, see what he had to say. But it was all a lie. Ego had been planning all of this for millennia… trying to…” she grimaced, twisting her fingers. “Create a new… power source... like him… to help him to spread himself across the universe, like a virus. Peter turned out to be… suitable.”

“Peter was suitable…" he mumbled, trying to make sense of her disjointed explanation. She was trying to tell him enough without telling him too much. "You mean children? ” Pops asked. "A new power source  _like him_...  Pete said he had this…  _ light _ , this power… you mean he was trying to make kids _like him_ to make more  _ power _ ?” 

Gamora nodded. She probably could have come up with another explanation, but the old man was quick. 

“So you guys went there, and…” Gamora looked up at him when he paused, and saw his expression change when the pieces clicked into place. “And Peter was  _ suitable _ ...” Pops whispered the statement and paled. “And that shit that happened here happened all over…”

He took a deep breath. “Shit.”

“Yes.”

“And Peter--”

“He… recovered. We all did. He’s strong. Our... family is strong... But it was not easy.” 

“I… think I understand why you asked me to lie,” Pops said, softly. His jaw was set, and she could see a quiet anger... but he held it firmly under control. 

Gamora shook her head. “I shouldn’t have asked that of you.” 

“No. But I understand.” 

Pops stood up with a short groan and held a hand out to Gamora. 

 

* * *

 

Peter pulled over and just listened for a minute. To the rain on the canvas roof of the Mustang, to the engine, his own breathing. It was still mid-afternoon, but the heavy clouds had darkened the sky into a sickly gray twilight that that made everything look a little otherworldly and twisted, like a bad dream.

He slid his hands to the top of the wheel and dropped his forehead onto his knuckles. 

He shouldn’t have left like that. He knew it when he did it, but he left anyway. Gamora was telling Pops to lie to him, keep things from him like he was a child who couldn’t handle a hard truth… 

...And then he basically proved her right by running away from home like a moody teenager. 

Super fucking mature. 

He halfheartedly banged his head on the wheel a couple of times, then grabbed his phone from the passenger seat. For a split second, he considered calling Gamora, but she’d insist on coming with him. 

Instead, Peter opened the satellite application that F.R.I.D.A.Y. had made to patch their comms signals with the common “LTE” bandwidths used planetside. The app beeped a few times as it made the connection. 

“You know, Gam’s pretty worried about yer ass,” Rocket drawled, answering the call. 

Peter was suddenly, inexplicably  _ happy _ to hear his friend’s voice. Even if the topic of conversation rankled him. 

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rocket’s voice was light, though Peter couldn’t help but hear a  _ ‘but.’ _

“Right,” Peter answered, then let a silence linger. 

“She told me what happened. Short version, anyway,” Rocket finally continued. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Didn’t say ya weren’t.”

“I’m not gonna freak out,” Peter added, feeling it was important to make the point.

“I said, I know, moron. Who ya tryin’ to convince?”

Peter winced. “Just saying.”

“Uh-huh.” Peter could  _ hear _ Rocket eyeing him through the comm. “Look, you want the location, or what?”

“What? You found it already?” 

“Man, I started scanning  _ while _ lying to Gamora about having a tracker on you. You’ve probably got about ten minutes tops, by the way, before she calls me back and chews me out because while  _ technically _ I don’t have trackers on you guys, of  _ course _ I can track your stupidly low-security ‘phone’ thingies,” Rocket replied, a hint of disgust shading his mention of primitive terran technology.  

“Well, naturally.” Peter grinned despite his shitty mood. He tapped at the screen to turn on the speaker, then set the phone down on the seat. He shifted into gear and slowly pulled back onto the road. “How far?” he asked. 

“Actually, not very. Keep heading south,” came Rocket’s voice from the phone. Peter glanced over when the light from the screen changed--a map appeared. “Just before you hit the town, turn right… ugh, these distance conversions are a bitch. Turn right in two miles. Then you gotta walk a bit… unless that rig’s got a hover drive I don’t know about…” Rocket mumbled. “Did you get the map?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” 

Peter saw the stop sign through the rain, the reflective trim glinting from the glare of the headlights. He looked both ways down the empty streets and turned right, driving another half mile before turning right again into what looked like an old parking lot. It was overgrown with weeds, the asphalt was cracked and broken and only the barest outline of a building’s foundation was visible. Beyond the parking lot was a grassy field, with what looked like a dry stream bed and some saplings trying to be a copse of trees. 

He sighed. It probably had been a copse of trees, before. A wooded area, with lots of plants and animals, a babbling brook and whatever the building was that used to be here… parking lot full of cars. 

Peter idly wondered if the man from the polaroid he’d found, who called himself “Jason,” ever brought his mother here. 

He pushed down the thought, then shut off the car, pulling the keys from the ignition and pushing open the door. The rain had changed from big, pelting drops to a mist of stinging drizzles. 

“Do you see the stream?” Rocket asked from the phone. 

“Yeah,” Peter answered, pocketing the keys and kicking the door closed with his heel. 

“Head straight toward it from where you are. You’re close, though.” 

Peter nodded, picking up on Rocket’s implication. “Okay.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before starting out toward the stream. 

He crossed the parking lot and was only a few yards into the field when the inside of his stomach started to  _ itch _ . God, he  _ hated _ this feeling. He squinted his eyes shut for just a second then pushed himself to continue walking as he brought the phone up, like he was used to doing with his comm. 

“Okay…” Peter made his voice sound steady. “I’m close.” 

“Gamora’s on her way, Pete.” 

Peter just kept walking. The itch in his stomach started to burn a little. 

“You don’t think you should just wait for her?”

“I can handle it, Rocket."

“What, you been practicin’ behind our backs, or something?” 

“What?” Peter replied. “No, of course not. I--” He stopped suddenly and looked down, a few feet ahead of him. “I think I’m here,” he said softly, stepping slowly forward and crouching near the bank of the dry stream. 

It was buried, but he  _ knew _ it was there. Peter propped his phone against a rock so the light from the screen cast in his general direction, then dropped to his knees, digging into the wet peat with cupped fingers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up a bit longer than originally planned. Last chapter will be up soon. Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dams break and missions are accomplished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter almost entirely in one day, and I don't know if it was because it was playing in my head or what, but I was kind of a wreck writing some parts of this. You might need a hanky.
> 
> Stuff with the Collector inspired by speculation about Thor: Ragnarok about the Grandmaster (and, the Collector, by extension), which is different from the comics, based on a Funko Pop...

_ Peter pinched his eyes shut and massaged the bridge of his nose. He knew to expect the eccentricity, of course, and that in itself was a little exhausting.  _

_ But the topic of the meeting--the contract part turned out to be (mostly) a fabrication--had been a punch to the gut, and now Peter was just downright stressed out.  _

_ The man opposite him began to speak again. “My dear cousin, if--” _

_ “Would you  _ please  _ stop fucking  _ calling  _ me that?” Peter growled. Gamora laid her hand on his forearm as Taneleer Tivan rolled his eyes with exaggerated flair.  _

_ “You are making it  _ very  _ difficult to be hospitable!” The Collector hissed back, pushing both hands down onto the table.  _

_ “Well, I’d hate to keep putting you out,” Peter shot back, pushing his chair back to stand up.  Gamora tightened her grip on his arm.  _

_ “Peter,” she said softly. He tried to glare at her, but his expression very quickly dissolved into an almost childlike plea for permission to just  _ leave _ already.  _

_ “Tivan,” she continued. “While we appreciate your candor thus far, it  _ would  _ be helpful for you to  _ get  _ to the  _ point _.” _

_ “Very  _ well _ ,” Tivan groaned, waving at his attendant, a Rajak female in a familiar white uniform. She left with a shallow bow.  _

_ “If it was up to me, you would already be behind glass…” The Collector began, casually. Peter stiffened and semi-consciously gripped his right pistol under the table. Tivan nodded toward a bank of muted infoscreens showing Sakaar’s Grandmaster presiding over a match in the nearby arena between a giant green humanoid and a full squad of heavily armored opponents.   _

_ “However, my dear elder brother has these…”  he continued, twirling his hand around, as if trying to pluck a word from the air. “ _ Illusions _ of familial loyalty. I suppose it’s not a principle without merit--with the demise of the Living Planet, Celestials are now effectively extinct from corporeal being. And they left so very  _ few  _ of us… half-breeds,” he spat. “...Behind, straddling the boundary between mortal existence and...  _ Eternity _... ” Tivan drew out the word, tapping the syllables out on the table top with the gaudy rings on his left hand and watching Peter closely. _

_ And Peter heard his pulse thunder in his ears as images of vast  _ nothingness  _ and…  _ everythingness _ and anything in between sliced through fibers of coherent thought like shards of glass. _

_ The Collector’s lip curled at the sight of Peter’s face. “Cruel, is it not? For our progenitors to show us the infinite possibility of the Eternal realm, then take it away? Leave us here, knowing that without them, our imperfect forms can never truly see it again... Maddening.” _

_ Peter set his jaw and swallowed hard, clearing his throat. “You were getting to the point?”  _

_ Peter hoped he made it fast. He was starting to feel sick about this whole thing and Wanted. To.  _ Leave _. His stomach itched and burned, in a weird kind of nausea, and his head was swimming. He resisted the urge to look over at Gamora, instead directing his focus to  _ not _ bobbing his knee up and down anxiously.  _

_ “The  _ point _ , dear cou--” Tivan groaned and rolled his eyes again, as if struggling mightily to behave against his own impulses. “Mis-ter _ Quill _ , is that in your father’s maladjusted, adolescent,  _ impatience _ to redesign primitive existence, he left behind a number of… acorns which did not perish with the tree.”  _

_ Peter frowned and found himself leaning forward, a little bit of… actual terror threatening to rise from his gut into his throat. “What do you mean?” Gamora asked flatly, barely beating him to the same question.  _

_ The Collector waved toward the entryway to his office, where his attendant was rolling in a cart with a small glass case on top. Inside was an orange-webbed seed, like the oversized bloom of a tulip. _

 

* * *

 

Peter’s fingertips finally brushed something other than wet dirt. Just looking at them, he always expected them to be rigid and brittle--it surprised him how they  _ weren’t;  _ instead, they were soft and malleable, covered in what was almost like a thin layer of human skin over cartilage. 

He pulled handfuls of dirt away from the seed, digging around it and underneath it. Peter tried to pull on it just a little bit, but he knew that it wouldn’t come up--not yet. It was wilted; they always were. But it wasn’t dead. Like the dozen or so others they’d found in the last three years, it had become self-sustaining, leaching trickles of energy from surrounding life forms to survive, since… 

“Pete? Still there?” 

Peter leaned back, sitting on his heels and wiping his hands on his pants. He looked down at the dull orange alien  _ thing  _ in the hole at his knees. He suddenly felt very, very tired. 

He looked up at the sky, realizing that the rain had stopped. The twilight was genuine, now, and not just because of the clouds. The sun had all but set, casting an extra yellow glow on everything that wasn’t already in shadow. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I found it. Dug it up.”

“Is it dead?” Rocket asked from the phone. Peter shook his head at the device, still propped against a rock. 

“No.”

He just sat there for a long minute, realizing for the first time how quiet it was, now that the rain had stopped. No birds chirping or whistling, no frogs croaking along the stream bank, no rustling of leaves as squirrels ran around in the underbrush. Like they all instinctively knew to stay away. He was glad. He didn’t want any little frogs or chipmunks getting slowly sucked dry by this thing, living too-short little frog and chipmunk lives...

And Peter started to cry, suddenly caring so,  _ so _ much about those damned chipmunks that it  _ hurt _ . His face grew hot and his eyes burned and he imagined critters, one by one, getting tired and falling asleep here, and never waking up… and how many did it take before their collective little critter minds figured out that this was a  _ bad _ place… 

…a rabbit there… a frog by that river rock… a raccoon by the--

He choked out a sob,  _ trying _ to stop. But he slumped backward and pulled his knees up, dropping his forehead onto his crossed arms. He could hear Rocket calling at him through the phone, but his brain kept spiraling. 

It was fucked up. He had the presence of mind to know that much. Peter hadn’t cried like this since Yondu died…

And like when Yondu died, with an ache that made his chest hurt and made him think his bones might break…

...He  _ just wanted his mom.  _

Oh. 

_ Shit _ . 

Peter slowly raised his head and glared at the silent, withered remnant in the hole. 

How was that fair?  _ It _ had a fucking grave… 

He rolled onto his knees and stood up, rubbing roughly at his eyes with the heels of his hands to clear his vision as he shuffled more than walked to the edge of the hole. But when he reached his hand down for his blaster, of course it wasn’t there. 

“Fucking son of a  _ bitch _ .” In his head, it was practically a scream, but it came out hoarse, choked off and exhausted. 

Peter looked around, frantically, as if there would be a weapon he could use just lying around somewhere, but all he saw was the cell phone, glowing in the almost-dark. He could still hear Rocket, but he seemed to be having a conversation with someone else entirely. 

Just as well.

Peter picked up the phone and threw it as hard as he could, then turned back toward the hole, only to be grabbed from behind. He jerked around instinctively, lashing out with an elbow, but--

Not grabbed.  _ Embraced.  _

_ Gamora.  _

He let her pull him to the ground, wrapping her arms tightly around him. Peter dropped his head to her shoulder, digging his forehead into her neck. He wanted to say something, but his throat was so tight that an unintelligible, weepy grunt was probably the best he could hope for. 

So, he reached around her back and clutched at her jacket, pulling her closer, if that was even possible. And he tried to breathe, still shuddering, with the occasional gasp to get a full lung’s worth. He realized that she was struggling to keep her breathing even, too… she sniffled, hugging him closer and very lightly kissed his head. 

“I’m sorry,” he managed to squeak out. She just shook her head. 

They stayed like that, just  _ holding  _ and  _ breathing _ . Over a few minutes, all traces of lingering daylight had vanished over the horizon and just a little moonlight filtered past the high, wrung-out clouds. 

Slowly, they relaxed, unfolding a bit and shifting beside each other, propped up against the big river rock. 

“I’m so sorry, Peter,” Gamora finally whispered. He swallowed hard, pulling his knees up. “You were so happy--” She stiffened and paused. Peter turned his head, resting it on his knee, and looked closely at her face. Her cheeks were damp, eyes closed. 

She opened her eyes and looked at him, tilting her head, face twisted and just so  _ sad.  _ “You were so happy here and I wanted that  _ so badly _ for you. To… have a home to come back to… a place that was… real… and good… and it  _ was _ … And then…” her meager defenses fell, and her voice trembled as she cried. 

“He took this away too. Tainted it. This one thing that should have been yours, defiled something… sacred…” 

He sat up and pulled her in, wrapping her up and drawing her head to his chest. 

“I just wanted it to stay good,” she said very softly. He coughed out a wet, breathy cry as the lump in his throat finally broke free, and nodded. 

“I know, baby. I know,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s still good. It’s so good, Gamora.” Peter took a slow breath, rocking them slightly and weaving his fingers in her hair. “This place is  _ ours _ . This is ours, and he didn’t take it away. Don’t ever worry about that.” 

“Your mother…”

Peter tightened his grip and rested his head on her’s. “She’s been dead for a long time,” he said. “He can’t kill her again. And I don’t need a headstone to remember her.” He took a deep breath and mentally ran through the list. He had killed her, literally took her from him. Then he took the one thing he had to remember her by when he squished his walkman. And now… 

“All you had from her was your tapes--” so she was doing the mental math, too. 

He smiled just a little. “Yeah, but that was out there. Now we’re here. And there were all those pictures upstairs, right?” Peter felt himself tearing up again, remembering all those years… “I didn’t even have a picture of her… and I know Pops had a video camera, he was super annoying with it when I was a kid.” He half-laughed, half-cried. “Hearing her voice again… shit. That… well, that actually that sounds really, really hard…” she gripped his arm tightly. “But better. A lot better than talking to a patch of ground that won’t talk back. And we have Pops, too… which is more than I could have ever asked for. And boy, does he love you… I lucked out.”

He kissed the top of her head. He was sure he could feel her smiling. 

“So it’s okay. It’s really okay,” he breathed. “We’re okay.”

“We’re okay,” she said. 

Peter nodded but couldn’t help looking toward the shadowy edge of the hole he’d dug. Now that it was dark, he could see a slight, white glow from inside. 

“It’s not going anywhere… we can call up for some weapons in the morning,” Gamora said quietly. 

“I wish they weren’t so tough. It would be really satisfying to just like… smash it with a hammer or a baseball bat or something,” he mumbled.

“You guys make me do  _ everything _ .”

Peter perked up, startled, and saw two flashlight beams moving in their direction. 

“Rocket?” he yelled, shrugging at Gamora as they stood up. “What the hell, man. You’re not supposed to be here.” 

“ _ Thank you, _ Rocket?” Rocket answered, mockingly. 

“For  _ what _ ?” Peter groaned. Rocket grinned as he cleared some brush and came into view, shoving one of Peter’s blasters into his hand as he passed. 

“Fer not bein’ a moron, moron.” Peter snorted and grinned, hefting his gun. “Oh yeah, and I found that falling asleep in the car… thing.” Rocket pointed his thumb behind him at the second flashlight beam.

“Pops?” 

“Ye--shit.” The beam wobbled a little and Peter rushed toward it. 

“Pops, you okay?” 

“Huh? Yeah, fine, fine.” Pops emerged about where Rocket had and clapped Peter on the back. 

“Rocket…” Gamora started, suspiciously. “How did you get here?”

Rocket waved a paw dismissively, stopping at the edge of the hole and whistling down at the seed. “Don’t worry, I came down in the Quinjet, dark and quiet. Nobody saw anything weird.” 

Peter joined Rocket and knelt down, using his free hand to dig the last of the dirt out of the middle of the seed. Inside the orange mesh, the small translucent bulb pulsed when his fingers brushed it. 

“What is it?” Pops asked, coming up behind him and pointing his flashlight into the hole. Peter stood up and clapped the dirt from his hands. 

“It’s one of Ego’s seeds. It’s what he used to… do… what he did,” Gamora answered. Pops nodded, and Peter shot her a confused look. 

“If he controlled it, and he’s dead… why does this one look like it’s still… alive? Shouldn’t all of his seed things have died too?” Pops asked. 

Peter glanced at Gamora again. Apparently, she’d shared a few things with him... 

“Most of them did die,” He explained. “Some didn’t. We’re not sure why. The ones that survived seemed to have… evolved, somehow. Started living off the life around them, instead of Ego’s energy. But they were part of him, whatever that could mean… so we’ve been destroying them, wherever we find them.”

“Can’t someone else do it? I mean, don’t the planets they’re on destroy them?”

“They’ve tried, but--”

“There’s kind of a process,” Rocket interrupted Peter. “Which I thought would be mostly done by now, Mr. ‘I can handle it.”

Peter sighed and rolled his eyes at Rocket. Then he turned and flipped the thumb toggle on his blaster before handing it to his grandfather, taking his flashlight in exchange. 

“It’s set for short burst, high power blasts. When I’m done, pull and release the trigger; don’t hold it. It’ll kick a little, so don’t lock your elbow. One shot should do it.” Pops took the gun and gripped it carefully, reflexively aiming barrel down, both hands on the weapon. 

“When you’re done with what?”

“I gotta kill it before we can destroy it.” Peter gave Gamora the flashlight and knelt down next to the hole. He reached one hand down toward the seed and rested his weight on the other, his fingers splayed out wide on the ground. 

He touched the seed, reaching his fingers inside it, making contact with the dimly lit bulb at its core. It brightened for a second, a numbing heat making his fingertips tingle, then the light faded. He imagined an arrow flying and stopped thinking, focusing on the sensation of pins and needles in his fingers, and  _ pulled _ the light out of the seed.

The gross feeling in his stomach finally went away and he took a breath. The light wanted to stay where it was, now, but  _ he  _ didn’t want it. Peter made it leave;  _ pushed  _ it out through his other hand, back into the ground, back to the planet it had stolen from. 

He pulled his hands up and sat back, scooting away from the hole and finding Gamora crouched and ready to support his flagging weight. He closed his eyes, sagging against her. Bright light flashed behind his eyelids and he heard the familiar sound of his blaster discharge.

 

* * *

 

He woke up to the sound of an engine and soft music on the radio. He couldn’t place the song… it wasn’t one of his. Must be new.

Peter opened his eyes. Gamora smiled down at him. He started to open his mouth, but she just gave him a thumbs up, and he nodded slowly. Everything was good. He rolled his head around… he was laying across the back bench of Pop’s SUV, head on Gamora’s lap, it seemed… and saw Pops driving. 

“Rocket?” He asked softly. 

“I sent him back up to the Quadrant, so he wouldn’t cause any trouble,” Gamora answered. 

“The seed?” 

“Vaporized. Nice gun,” Pops said. Peter caught sight of his eyes in the rearview. Peter snorted. 

“So…” Pops started, tentatively. “He lied? About you not having superpowers anymore if you killed him?” 

Peter grunted and pushed himself up, still leaning heavily on Gamora. 

“Well, no…” he said. “He wasn’t lying. I don’t have any… ‘superpowers.’ Well, maybe I’m still a little… sturdier than average, but...”

“So what did you do? With the seed?” Pops asked. Peter shrugged. 

“That was his power, not mine. It was stored up in the seed… I just… moved it. It wasn’t any new energy or any special power. He told the truth… I had a connection to  _ his  _ power, that disappeared when we killed him. But his seeds have his power too, so that connection is still there.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Peter answered. “I mean… _someday_ , I might be able to do some stuff… apparently it takes thousands, if not millions of years to develop the ah… superpowers… and I’m... “ he turned to Gamora. “What did Tivan call me?” 

“A zygote?” she smirked. He glowered. 

“Right. So maybe in a million years or so, I could shoot laser beams outta my eyes, but honestly, I’m not interested in sticking around long enough to find out.”

Pops chuckled, turning into the driveway. “That’s okay, kid. I love ya anyway.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! It was pretty late when I posted this... I had to get it done, so I wouldn't be thinking about it all day at work... so please forgive any errors, and I will fix whatever I catch after posting. I also tried some knew things in this chapter, so I'm wondering if they worked... anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! And for your support! :)


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